... an organization of professionals, we accept and act on our broad responsibility to be involved in the social development of the communities and the province we live in, and we do this in the interests of the children we teach. ["... broad responsibility ..."? According to who?]

... The social justice initiatives of the Federation focus on poverty, child and youth issues, race relations, gender equity, homophobia and heterosexism, bullying, environmental issues, globalization, and violence prevention. In addition, the Federation has an advisory committee on Aboriginal education. [They haven't left out many of the social activists' favourite buzz words.]

The oil sands has become the main target ... for radical green groups. The recent decision ... to hold up approval of the ... Keystone XL pipeline was a major coup, and has encouraged radical NGOs to up their campaigns of lies and intimidation.

Last year, ForestEthics, a veteran of anti-corporate thuggery, sent a demand to Chiquita. ... a grovelling response committing “to directing our transportation providers to avoid, where possible, fuels from tar sands refineries ...”

... California-based ForestEthics, an anti-capitalist organization that is ... has run roughshod over truth and jobs for too long. Its previous corporate victims included U.S. clothing giant Limited Brands... Rather than attempt to refute ForestEthics misrepresentations, Limited Brands paid to “work with” the NGO, thus setting a precedent for green extortion. ... Trader Joe’s ... Walmart and Safeway...

... British bath products company Lush, which gets its scientific objectivity from ForestEthics’ fellows Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network. ...

... another enormous symbolic victory last year ... an agreement with the Forest Products Association of Canada ...

... ForestEthics used Chiquita’s letter to bolster its attack on rival fruit company Dole. “Dole Bananas: Brought to you by dirty Tar Sands oil,” claims the ForestEthics website ... Dole’s response? To grovel.

... let’s have a full accounting from ForestEthics of all the money they have received from the corporations who have been bullied into “working with them.”

Four years ago, Chiquita paid a stiff fine for buying mafia-style “protection” from South American thugs masquerading as freedom fighters. Is trying to buy protection from the mendacious green lobby any different?

... Disaster relief in Canadian communities selected the top priority mission by 73 per cent ... followed by search and rescue, selected by 68 per cent, ... patrolling Canada's air space, land and maritime areas by 66 per cent. ... Enforcing sovereignty in the Arctic ... 52 per cent while ... fighting the war o[n] terrorism came last at 51 per cent.

That’s back-asswards to the military’s actual set of priorities which are defence and sovereignty followed by peacekeeping, search and rescue and lastly aid-to-the-civil-power (eg. disaster relief and riot control).

But hey, let’s look on the bright side. Maybe the Canadian penchant for “disaster relief in Canadian communities” can be turned to military advantage. If we’re going to do it properly (Canada’s a big country) a doubling of uniformed personnel is called for. Also whatever equipment is bought should be dual-roled for disaster relief and defence operations. That calls for a lot more tanks fitted to accept a snowplow blade and more APC’s fitted to accept street-sweepers (cleanup after riots) and even a Zamboni kit for special hockey emergencies. And we’ll need a much bigger fleet of CC-177 Globemasters to get the snowplows and cleanup equipment to where it’s needed. That’s just my back-of-the-envelope estimate of equipment possibilities - think what real military planners could come up with.

There is a long list of things to congratulate the Conservative gov’t for and foreign policy and defence are two that top my list:

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird knows some of his government's positions on the world stage are unpopular....

... "We don't develop foreign policy to be popular around the world," he said ...

... Gone is the so-called "soft power" and "human security agenda" of the previous Liberal government ...

... The Canadian military has emerged as a major player in Canadian foreign policy in recent years, bolstered by the fact the Defence Department budget has increased nearly $5.6 billion to $20.3 billion since the Conservative government came into power.[$20B is about double what it was when I left the military.]

... Baird said the government is simply undoing years of damage wreaked by Liberal governments in the 1990s and early 2000s. "The military was gutted for 13 years," he said. ... the government is pre-paring to spend billions on new F-35 fighter jets..

... Baird indicates those who are most critical of Canada's stances aren't likely to be friends anyway. ... "We've taken a tough stand on human rights in some parts of the world, and that makes some people feel very uncomfortable," he said. ...

As always it takes a Conservative government to clean up after years of Liberal weakness, neglect and folly. The last time there was any serious boost to defence was under Brian Mulroney and the Harper government has easily surpassed that.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

... the prime minister's government is also quietly bankrolling one of the largest social pilot projects ever seen in Canada, paying generously for cutting-edge research that is changing the lives of hundreds of homeless people.

... taking their cue from Harper, officials decided to zero in on a sub-group: the mentally ill.

... Then they narrowed their focus further. In five cities across the country, they targeted a particularly vulnerable sector of the mentally ill homeless population.

Interesting story, but I have trepidations. As long as this is research oriented, limited in scope and under Conservative watch I don’t mind the feds taking the lead. The targeted group is certainly the most deserving of help. And it beats the hell out of “safe injection sites”. However, how long will it be before this morphs into an unsustainable “national strategy” to fulfill the peoples’ bogus “right to housing”. A Lib/Dipper coalition would certainly attempt to turn it into that in a heartbeat - shades of their National Daycare Plan.

... When governments, both federal and provincial, see the final results, he is convinced they will see the need to take housing-first to a national scale and someone will step up with funding.

And don’t proponents of these schemes always promise that they will be saving a pile of money? Sure they do:

"Once it's finished, we're going to make sure that every government in the country knows we saved them a whole pile of money,"

...a major new scholarly book, "Pathological Altruism" (Oxford University Press), explores this phenomenon of people wanting to do good things yet ending up doing bad. It applies to The New York Times ... columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who has a deep altruistic urge to bring peace to the Middle East. But because he sees the world through the liberal/left prism, he says morally reprehensible things ...

... Leftism poisons everything it influences -- from journalism to the arts to universities to religion to government to male-female relations. And ultimately leftism poisons character. This does not mean that everyone with left-wing views becomes a bad person [or] that everyone with conservative views is a good person....

... But it does mean that leftism leads to pathologic altruism, ... Just as Mahatma Gandhi's hatred of violence led him to tell the Jews of Europe not to resist Hitler, so too has leftism led decent people who would weep at Israel's destruction to mouth the very same lies about Israel as those who seek its annihilation.

Ok, that sort of fits with the idea that much, if not most, of what passes for "altruism" is narcissistic do-goodism, mainly a trait of the left. Perhaps that (plus the malign sentiments and consequences) is what makes it "pathological" (and leftist).

The University of Manitoba wishes to take a leadership role in helping expose the national shame of the Indian Residential Schools system and the consequences of such a system. [The back of the line is over there.]

... For over 130 years, the University of Manitoba has worked to create, preserve and communicate knowledge. Moreover, our academic institution has a long history of encouraging debate, building excellence and fostering innovation. [Admittedly, back in the day, the residential schools and assimilation innovations were all the rage in academia].

... it is clear that we did not live up to our goals, our ideals, our hard-earned reputation or our mandate. [Even though our predecessors’ goals and ideals included residential schools.]

... That was a grave mistake[with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight and currently fashionable political correctness]. It is our responsibility [No it isn’t]. We are sorry. [Boo hoo!]

...Instead of being positive influences on Aboriginal peoples, education and religion became tools of assimilation, thus undermining the rich diversities of First Nations, Métis and Inuit cultures, communities and families. [If only our crude and ignorant ancestors had known better.]

... Today the University of Manitoba adds our voice to the apologies ...... We apologize to our students.... We apologize to our Indigenous faculty and staff.... We apologize to First Nations, Métis and Inuit leaders and Elders. ...[We, the uninvolved, apologize to everyone.]

[There, that feels much better!!]

Signed,David T. Barnard, President and Vice-Chancellor

There's something weird and unseemly about people who had little or no role apologizing for the decisions and actions of well intentioned predecessors who operated under different assumptions and knowledge. I wonder if they give any thought at all to the possibility that what they are doing today their distant future successors might feel obliged to apologize for - eg: suppression of free speech on campus; rampant political correctness, and; the indoctrination of students in highly dubious theories of multiculturalism, radical feminism and postmodernism (and that's the short list)? I think not.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Friday, December 23, 2011

Further to my two previous posts here's a video of Grant Mitchell bloviating on climate change:

Mitchell is a closed-minded true believer. I left these comments at YouTube where Grant's approval is required. Will he approve?

There is no scientific debate about AGW? Really? If Mitchell believes this it's because he keeps his head buried in the sand, listening only to proponents of the AGW hypothesis and catastrophic AGW alarmists. The scientific literature is replete with peer reviewed work that is at odds with that hypothesis. Open your closed mind Senator Mitchell, and learn to think for yourself.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

See the previous post re the Senate Energy and Environment committee hearings (video at the 1hr 50min mark) for the remarks of committee Deputy Chair, Senator Grant Mitchell (Liberal, Alberta). Note that earlier he had declined to ask the first question (as is his normal routine) stating he preferred to go last. From his remarks it's easy to see why. The man is a complete asshole!

Senator Mitchell (a political 'scientist' and smirking full time), said that while he didn't doubt the sincerity of the four contrarian scientists, there was an "overwhelming concensus" [there we go again!] of equally sincere scientists who subscribe wholeheartedly to AGW as a serious problem requiring action. He referred to the IPCC as "the strawman that's been raised here") [Uh oh!] adding that many scientists who hold the opposing view are not IPCC scientists but "independent scientists all over the world". To believe these (skeptical) arguments is "to believe some kind of strange conspiracy theory" and to believe that "theHarper government is clamping down on scientists to enforce elite climate science concensus" ... "it's the last government that would enforce concensus". Before ending Mitchell claims that "there is devastating science that confronts and overwhelms what you are saying" and it's "the same as saying that vaccines are dangerous ... that cell phones cause cancer or that evolution is not true.... If humans aren't causing this we have to be very, very afraid ... then we can't fix it."[Wow! Just wow! Them's fighting words! Mitchell is a closed minded twit and an asshat!! Is he alone on the committee in this line of thinking? Perhaps not but he's the only one to show his true colours here. And note that he gave a speech with no intention of asking questions and getting a response he clearly isn't interested in hearing. He pretty much ran out the clock.] Prof Veizer asked whether he could speak off the record to address Mitchell's remarks. I think given the chance Veizer would have clocked the pr*ck (verbally of course).

Now we're getting to the nub of the problem. That there is "scientific concensus" is widely accepted dogma. Senator Mitchell certainly has no doubts.

Excellent presentations by very credible people - Ross McKitrick, Ian Clark, Jan Veizer and Tim Patterson. There was a goofy event during Ian Clark's (U of Ottawa) briefing on CO2 and the paleoclimate record in which he used several graphs which unfortunately were not being displayed. The chair, Senator Angus interrupted Prof Clark (at about the 27 min mark) to explain that the graphs were not being broadcast to TV and web audiences because they were not bilingual. Idiotic but, hey, this is Canada. Happily, this lead to a good discussion by Clark of greenhouse gases and the dishonesty exposed by the Climategate emails.

Professor Patterson hit one of my favourite contentions - that global cooling is a much greater threat than warming, especially to Canada. If we were properly looking out for our own interests we'd be promoting anything that might lead to warming not trying to suppress it.

Senator Paul Massicotte (Liberal) brought up the "concensus" issue. He asked why should he, a non-technical political decision maker, believe the skeptics when the vast majority of scientists including government scientists believe in AGW? Tim Patterson attempted an answer but Massicotte wasn't impressed.

Senator Banks (Liberal) believes that we should be following the precautionary principle. Gaaakk! He laid out four extreme but uncertain scenarios and asked: Where should we place our bet? McKitrick responded that Banks had set up an impossibly difficult decision-making problem and suggested that rather than betting on one of a set of bad options a carbon tax based on global temperature could be set up (McKitrick's T3 Tax).

Senator Richard Neufeld (Conservative) said he agreed with Massicotte. They hear from scientists on one side that it that it's so simple, AGW is happening [probably that's all that they've heard until this session] and from the other side not so or not necessarily so. He said he's not sold either way and asked how many scientists would be "on the same wave length" as the four presenters. "Are there a lot of them? Are they just quiet? Why are they quiet? Because the other side is very loud." [Good point! Thank you Senator!] The chair, Sen Angus, then spoke up to confirm that the committee had heard much, much more from AGW true-believers (not his words) than from skeptics. Good answer from Prof. Veiser starting with a bandwagon analogy and his experience with bandwagon thinking in communist Czekoslovakia. He moved on to the corruption in the UN IPCC process, including suppression of contrary views and intimidation tactics.

Senator Robert Peterson (Liberal) brought up the tipping point ("break point" or catastrophic AGW) scare. Clark said these "break points" are based on speculation about the predictability of how climate will behave. Climate is too complex to reliably predict. He referred to such talk as "alarmist" and "wild speculation" (giving as an example the prediction by the scientific advisor to the British government that "in 100 years the only habitable place on the planet will be Antartica").

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

... Hitch was a court jester for the liberal elites. He took care never to violate their most sacred taboos. Like Stephen Jay Gould, who also died too young, also of cancer, Hitch carried the banner of soft Marxism forward into the post-Soviet era. ...

... For many of Hitchens’ fellow journalists, the virtuosity of his brilliant writing and bracing conversation earned him a pass on the hatred. But hatred it remained. His commercial genius was to harbour hatreds sufficiently vast and varied that a lucrative constituency could be found to relish all of them....

... He was no conservative. You can’t really be a conservative in the Anglo-American tradition and hate religion. You can be a non-believer, I think. But you have to at least have respect for the role of religion and maybe a little reverence for the role of transcendence in people’s lives. Hitch had nothing but contempt. It was one of the last truly asinine Marxist things about him.

... I’m not inclined to sugarcoat my take on the man given how he could be absolutely cruel when spouting off about the deaths of others. He could be mean, pigheaded, and insensitive (though never dull!). He could also be generous and kind. He was a brilliant and gifted polemicist who sometimes took the easiest way out by going after his opponents’ weakest arguments rather than their strongest. He defied easy categorization while having a gift for categorizing others. He’ll be missed because he was so damn good at being Christopher Hitchens.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

APost Media column ("We are not a threat") (Minna Ella in the photo) appeared in yesterday's The Vancouver Sun. I left the following comment at the digital edition:

This column is a puff-piece (by and for gullible Westerners) promoting Islamist ideology.

Very few Muslim women residing in the West wear the niqab or burka. With the exception of the most repressive nations (eg Saudi Arabia) many Muslim women elsewhere don’t wear it either. Some are forced to do so by radical Muslim patriarchal authority figures for cultural/religious reasons. Others, the most radicalized of Muslim women, claim to choose to do so also for religious/cultural reasons. Either way it is the most radical of Muslim women who wear the niqab or burka in Western countries. Tarik Fatah has said that it is a deliberate flashing of a middle finger to Western infidels.

Radical Islam makes no bones about its hostility to Westerners and to Western values (including gender equality among other personal freedoms). It seeks to propagate its hostile ideology in the West through propaganda and subversive legal tactics. It also poses a serious direct threat to security and safety (remember 9/11 and the Toronto 18).

Is Minna Ella a radical Muslim? Some evidence (from least to most significant):

(1) her claim of theological justification for wearing the niqab is highly debatable. It’s a point of contention even among Islamic scholars. Most Muslim women don’t wear it. (2) she chooses to wear a niqab knowing full-well that most of her fellow citizens are intimidated by it or, at best, uncomfortable with it. This is not what you’d call sociable behaviour.(3) she works as an administrator for a school sponsored by the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC). According to one report (Ref below) "The MAC are adherents to the teachings of Hassan Al Banna, an admirer of Hitler, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a preacher of genocidal jihad against Kuffars [infidels]."
[Ref.http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2011/07/muslim-brotherhood-approves-of-toronto.html].

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

... I regret that Canada has announced it will withdraw and am surprised over its timing. Whether or not Canada is a Party to the Kyoto Protocol, it has a legal obligation under the Convention to reduce its emissions, and a moral obligation to itself and future generations to lead in the global effort....

And check out this CBC video (at the 1 hr mark) with Evan Solomon's flabbergasted sputtering when Tom Flanagan and John Ivison say they're AGW skeptics. It seems never to have occurred to him that some of his carefully selected pundits might not be true believers.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

What is it about Vancouver and its determination to make pot smoking a regular activity, like drinking coffee?

... four former Vancouver mayors [Mike Harcourt, Philip Owen, Larry Campbell and Sam Sullivan] ... waded into matters well beyond any local jurisdiction, penning an open letter last month that demanded the end of marijuana prohibition in Canada.

... Last week, sitting Mayor Gregor Robertson chipped in with a tweet: "Good to see 4 Vancouver ex-mayors calling for end of cannabis prohibition. I agree, we need to be smart and tax/ regulate."

... A key flaw in the legalization and regulation argument, what proponents such as the four ex-mayors and Mr. Robertson ignore, is the assumption that underground markets would just disappear. In fact, they would continue to thrive. [True. In my hometown in Manitoba the RCMP spent most of their time chasing bootleggers. Also the drug gangs who peddle marijuana also peddle just about every other illegal and dangerous substance. They’ll continue to sell it all.]

... What damage, one must ask? The mayors weren't talking about physical and mental health, which would seem paramount.

... What about long-term health and productivity effects? Have those been punched into any cost-benefit analysis? ... work-related intoxication, and certainly impaired driving .... Would a bus driver be free to smoke a joint - or three, or five - before or during his shift? How could anyone detect if he had?

What always begins as a campaign for legalization of physician-assisted suicide in strictly defined circumstances quickly morphs into easily acquired suicide and euthanasia. There were a couple of examples in today’s Vancouver Sun.

... my 76-year-old patient had a sore on his arm which turned out to be cancer. I referred him to a cancer specialist for evaluation and therapy.

... he became ... depressed, which was documented in his chart.

... He expressed a wish for assisted suicide to the cancer specialist, but rather than taking the time and effort to address his depression, ... she asked me to be the "second opinion" for his suicide.

I told her that I did not concur ... two weeks later he was dead from an overdose prescribed by this doctor.

In most jurisdictions, suicidal ideation is interpreted as a cry for help. In Oregon, the only help my patient got was a lethal prescription intended to kill him. Don't make Oregon's mistake.

Mobile medical teams able to euthanize people in their own homes are being considered by the Dutch government. The teams of doctors and nurses would be sent out from a clinic following a referral from the patient's doctor.

... Dutch medics have been accused of practising euthanasia on demand.

... Twenty-one people diagnosed with early-stage dementia died with the help of their doctors last year, according to a 2010 report on euthanasia.

The figures showed another year-on-year rise in cases with about 2,700 people choosing death by injection compared to 2,636 the previous year. ..

Christie: "... I’d dispatch the Canadian army, with its fabulous engineer corps, up to Attawapiskat pronto. ... I’d have them repair or throw up housing sufficient for the 2,300 residents ..."
['Giving' them stuff, doing it for them, solves nothing. Among the biggest problems on the reserve is that the residents have no employment and, worse, have no skills. If crappy housing is the problem wouldn't it be better to train the locals and get them to build their own houses? A bonus would be that they'd be more able and likely to maintain them later (and to build new ones when needed). A further bonus would be that they'd have skills they could take south with them should they choose to escape the reserve.]

Christie: "... The longer term one would see some of the big brains in Canada (that would necessarily also include some strategic thinkers from the military) locked in a small room until they figure out something better than the infantilizing Indian Act and the paralysis engendered by the reserve system. ..."
[Here we go again, the "big brains" in the south figuring out how to solve the Indians' problems. Infantalizing them further. The Indians need to figure out for themselves what they want, and what it is practical to do. Christie gives the Indian so-called "leaders" too easy a ride. They've been a giant flop up to now. Make them get their act together. And perpetual welfare subsidizies (throwing more money at it) isn't a solution.]

My initial reaction to the press generated ‘furor’ over Peter MacKay’s ride in a Cormorant SAR chopper was near complete indifference. It’s much ado about bugger-all. I don’t see the scandal in the MND commandeering a ride in a military aircraft once in a blue-moon. Big deal!

Having read the latest story about the "scandalous emails" I’m still indifferent about MacKay’s helicopter trip, but disappointed in some of the military officers involved. If there’s any embarrassment in this situation it will be mostly because of stupid, indiscreet comments and speculation in emails that have been leaked [or FOI’d] to the press:

... At one point during the discussion, a different officer, Col. Bruce Ploughman of One Canadian Air Division Headquarters in Winnipeg, raised concerns about the optics of picking the minister up from a fishing trip with a military helicopter.

"When the guy who's fishing at the fishing hole next to the minister sees the big yellow helicopter arrive and decides to use his cellphone to video the minister getting on board and post it on YouTube," Ploughman wrote, "who will be answering the mail on that one?" [And he puts this in writing?! Good grief!]

Ploughman expressed reluctance to have the military accept the mission. [If true, Ploughman is truly an idiot. A tasking coming from high up the chain, in support of the MINISTER of Defence, isn’t something you’d expect a mere colonel to“express reluctance” about “accepting”.]

"If we are tasked to do this we, of course, will comply," he wrote. "Given the potential for negative press though, I would likely recommend against it, especially in view of the fact that the Air Force receives regular [freedom-of-information requests] specifically targeting travel on [military] aircraft by ministers." [Oh the irony! It doesn’t seem to have crossed Ploughman’s pea-brain that his own email musings might be even more damaging should they be made public.]

The next day, July 7, 2010, Lt.-Col. Chris Bulls wrote that the "mission will be under the guise" of search-and-rescue training. [“ ... under the guise of ...”!!? Kee-ryste - how about (at least) “... the mission is search-and-rescue training”??]

What a couple of dumb-asses! My bet is that those colonels’ careers will be suffering a severe set-back. Their bosses, right up to the CDS, will be livid.

JR on:

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"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences." -- C. S. Lewis